According to a document from the California Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC), a University of California, San Diego neurosurgeon and professor has been fined $12,000 for failing to disclose his ties to a non-governmental funding source on his application for a research project. Dr. William Taylor, a specialist in minimally invasive spinal surgery, received funding from medical device company NuVasive Inc. for four projects in which he was the principal investigator. In the FPPC document he indicated that he did not intend to keep information from the public or from UCSD, and he did not deliberately omit his income from NuVasive on application forms. Taylor has discontinued work on three of the projects, and turned over responsibility on two of them.